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The work is a nineteenth‑century natural‑history survey of Aleppo and its surroundings, written by Alexander Russell, a physician who lived through a three‑year plague outbreak in the city. The opening pages explain that the author set out to document the epidemic and, while doing so, observed the customs, architecture, and commerce of the inhabitants. He then expands his scope to describe the city’s layout, its houses, fountains, bazaars, and surrounding countryside, offering detailed notes on local plants, birds, and fisheries, as well as the methods Europeans used to preserve themselves during the pestilence. The narrative is anchored in the author’s own experience, limited to Aleppo and its immediate environs, and is accompanied by illustrations of dress, furniture, and natural specimens.
Russell writes in a measured, didactic voice typical of early‑modern scientific travelogues, blending factual description with occasional personal reflection. The prose is formal and occasionally uneven, reflecting his long residence abroad and limited time for literary polish. Readers who enjoy meticulous eighteenth‑century observations of urban life, geography, and disease, particularly scholars of Ottoman‑era Syria, historians of medicine, or collectors of detailed travel literature, will find this volume a valuable window into the city’s physical and social landscape during a tumultuous period.
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The Author’s intention, when he first began to digest his materials, was only to exhibit an account of the epidemic diseases at Aleppo, particularly of the plague, which raged three years in that city during his residence therein. A long and extensive practice among all ranks and degrees of people, had furnished him with the means of being perfectly well acquainted with the customs and manners of the inhabitants. The neighbourhood of this place, its site, and natural productions, he found had not been so fully described, but that there still was room left for improvement. Instead, therefore, of confining himself singly to so much of the general history of the place as might be sufficient for the purpose of his profession, he has entered into the subject more at large, and has endeavoured to present the reader with a succinct, but at the same time an exact account of such things relative thereto as seemed most to merit attention. It must however be remembered that his observations are confined to one city, and its environs only. Other places, and those too at no great distance, may have other customs; and to this it may be ascribed, that different writers on the head of the customs of eastern nations present us with very different accounts.
When it is considered that the Author resided many years abroad, and conversed daily in other languages more than in his own, which he had but little leisure to cultivate, the defects in his stile, it is hoped, will be forgiven.
In the plates he has not only endeavoured to give an idea of the various dresses of the people, but a view of their furniture, habitations, and amusements.
The birds and fishes here delineated are such as, to the best of the Author’s knowledge, have not before been properly represented, and those of the plants are chiefly of the same kind. So many of the Arabic names of these as were collected, would have been given, had it been possible to have expressed them justly in English characters, or easy to have had them correctly printed in Arabic; in which language, it must be observed, all the names of places, &c. in this work are given, unless mentioned to be otherwise.
The different subjects in the first part were intended to have been pointed out, by varying the running-title according to the subject; but, by mistake, this was omitted till too late.
The method used by the Europeans for their preservation during the rage of a pestilence was chiefly intended for the use of the Author’s friends in Aleppo, to whom it was presented on his leaving that country. To those in Europe he sincerely wishes that it may never otherwise be useful than to satisfy their curiosity.
How far the Author’s abilities have been equal to the task he has undertaken, the public will judge; and he intreats their candour. That he has had fair opportunities of observing, that he has given a faithful narrative of facts, and that he has used no false colouring in his representation, he presumes to appeal to his cotemporaries and acquaintance, who, in visiting these places again in his description, may perhaps call to mind many agreeable hours they have spent even in these scenes, so far distant from their native country.
A DESCRIPTION OF THE CITY of ALEPPO, AND THE PARTS ADJACENT.
Haleb, or, as we call it, Aleppo, the present metropolis of _Syria_[1], though greatly inferior to the cities of Constantinople and Cairo in extent, number of inhabitants, riches, and perhaps several other circumstances, yet, in respect to buildings, yields to none in the Turkish empire.
This city and suburbs stand on eight small hills or eminences, none of them considerable, except that in the middle of the place, on which the castle is erected. This mount is of a conic form, and seems, in a great measure, to be artificial, and raised with the earth thrown up out of a broad deep ditch that surrounds it. The suburbs, called Sheih il Arab, to the N. N. E. are next in height to this, and those to the W. S. W. are much lower than the parts adjacent, and than any other parts of the city.
An old wall not a little decayed, and a broad ditch now in most places turned into gardens, surround the city, the circumference of which is about three miles and an half; but, including the suburbs, which are chiefly to the North East, the whole may be about seven miles[2].
The houses, are composed of apartments, on each of the sides, of a square court all of stone, and consist of a ground floor which is generally arched, and an upper story which is flat on the top, and either terraced with hard plaister, or paved with stone. Their ceilings are of wood neatly painted, and sometimes gilded, as are also the window-shutters, the pannels of some of their rooms, and the cupboard doors, of which they have a great number: these, taken together, have a very agreeable effect. Over the doors and windows within the houses of the Turks, are inscribed passages out of the Koran, or verses either of their own composition, or taken from some of their most celebrated poets. The Christians generally borrow theirs from scripture.
In all their houses the court yard is neatly paved, and, for the most part, has a bason with a jet d’eau in the middle, on one or both sides of which, a small spot is left unpaved for a sort of garden, which often does not exceed a yard or two square; the verdure, however, which is here produced, together with the addition of a few flowers in pots, and the fountains playing, would be a very agreeable sight to the passenger, if there were openings to the street through which these might be discovered, but they are entirely shut up with double doors so contrived, as that, when open, one cannot look into the court yard; and there are no windows to the street, except a very few in their upper rooms; so that nothing is to be seen but dead walls, which make their streets appear very disagreeable to Europeans.
Most of the better sort of houses have an arched alcove within this court open to the north, and opposite to the fountain; the pavement of this alcove is raised about a foot and an half above that of the yard, to serve for a divan[3]. Between this and the fountain the pavement is generally laid out in mosaic work, with various coloured marble; as is also the floor of a large hall with a cupola roof, which commonly has a fountain in the middle, and is almost the only tolerably cool room in their houses during the summer.
The people of fashion have in the outer court but one or two rooms below stairs for themselves, the rest are for servants and stabling; the pavement of this is but rough, as their horses stand there all the summer, except a few hours in the middle of the day. Above stairs is a colonade, if not round the whole court, at least fronting the west, off from which are their rooms and _kiosks_[4]; these latter are a sort of wooden divans, that project a little way from the other part of the building, and hang over the street; they are raised about one foot and an half higher, than the floor of the room, to which they are quite open, and, by having windows in front and on each side, there is a great draught of air, which makes them cool in the summer, the advantage chiefly intended by them. Beyond this court is another, containing the womens apartments, built much in the same manner that I have described the other houses; some few of them have a tolerable garden, in which, as well as in the outer yard, there is generally a tall cypress tree.
The mosques in Aleppo are numerous, and some few of them magnificent; before each is a square area, in the middle of which, is a fountain for the appointed ablutions before prayers, and behind some of the larger mosques there is a little garden.
Besides these open spaces there are many large khanes or (as most travellers call them) caravan seraijs, consisting of a capacious square, on all sides of which are built on the ground floor a number of rooms, used occasionally for stables, warehouses, or chambers. Above stairs a colonade occupies the four sides, to which opens a number of small rooms, wherein the merchants, as well strangers as natives, transact most of their business.
The streets are generally narrow, but, however, are well paved, and kept remarkably clean.
The market places, called here bazars, are properly, long, covered, narrow streets, on each side of which are a number of small shops just sufficient to hold the tradesman (and perhaps one or two more) with all the commodities he deals in about him, the buyer being obliged to stand without. Each separate branch of business has a particular bazar allotted them, and these, as well as the streets, are all locked up an hour and an half after sunset, and many of them earlier, which is a great security from house-breakers. It deserves to be remembered, how odd soever it may appear, that though their doors are mostly cased with iron, yet their locks are made of wood.
In the suburbs, to the eastward, are their slaughter-houses, in a very airy place, with a large open field before them. The tanners have a khane, where they work, in the south west part of the town near the river.
To the southward, just without the walls in the suburbs, they burn lime; and a little way further is a small village, where they make ropes and catgut, which last manufacture is, at some seasons, extremely offensive.
In Mesherka, which is part of the suburbs on the opposite side of the river to the westward, is a glass-house, where they make a coarse kind of white glass, but they work only a few months in the winter, the greatest part of this manufacture being brought from a village called Armenass, about thirty-five miles to the westward, from whence also they bring the sand used in their glass-house at Aleppo.
The city is supplied with very good water from some springs near the banks of the river at Heylan, about five miles to the north north east, which is conveyed from thence by an aquæduct, and distributed to the different parts of the town by earthen pipes. There is a tradition, that this aquæduct was the work of the empress Helena, and that from her the springs took their present name: this water is sufficient for the necessary purposes of drinking, cookery, &c. Besides this, almost every house has a well, but the water of these, being brackish, is only employed for washing their court yards, and filling the reservoirs for their fountains.
The fuel, used in their houses, is wood and charcoal; for heating their bagnios, they burn the dung of animals, leaves of plants, parings of fruit, and such like, which they employ people to gather and dry for that purpose.
The markets are well supplied with provisions, of which we shall have occasion to give a more particular account.
For at least four or five miles round Aleppo, the ground is very stony and uneven, having a number of small eminences, most of which are as high as any part of the city. From the west south west to the north west by west, this sort of country continues for at least twenty miles, with a number of small fertile plains interspersed. To the northward and southward, after about six or seven miles, the country is level and not stony. To the eastward a vast plain commences, which, though it is called the desart, yet for a great many miles beyond Aleppo, affords a fine fertile soil.
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